"Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent" is the title of Lydia Tenaglia's portrait of master chef Jeremiah Tower.

By Al Alexander/For The Patriot Ledger

You meet a lot of interesting people in documentaries; usually ones you’ve never heard of before. People like master chef Jeremiah Tower, a tragic figure finally given his long gestating due in a blue-plate special by Lydia Tenaglia boisterously subtitled “The Last Magnificent.” It’s the usual hash about the rise and fall of a misunderstood genius. But what grabs you is what grabbed everyone who ever entered Tower’s rarified atmosphere, and that’s his potent je ne sais quoi. As many of Tenaglia’s talking heads remind us, it was hard not to be intoxicated by the tall, handsome man with the British accent.

It’s difficult to dispute that assessment, considering how engrossed you become in the life story of a living, breathing contradiction. He’s a loner who loves to be around people; loosey-goosey but exacting, a free and easy soul with a taciturn mentality. He’s also an open book, but few know how to read between the lines. As the film’s executive producer Anthony Bourdain notes, “There’s a locked room inside Jeremiah Tower. I know I’ve never gotten in, and I don’t think many people have.” Yet he’s been adored by everyone from Martha Stewart and Mario Batali, both of whom show up here to sing their praises, to the late Julia Child, who lived just down the street from where Tower first honed his culinary skills cooking for classmates while studying architecture at Harvard in the 1960s. It was a time of student protest, but Tower abstained, preferring to commit his radical acts in the kitchen. When he set out for San Francisco Bay in 1972, he never entertained any idea of cooking for a living. Then he walked into one of Berkeley’s grooviest hippie hangouts, Chez Panisse. Hired on the spot by owner Alice Waters, he would proceed to turn the flower-power eatery into one of the nation’s finest gourmet restaurants – only to be stabbed in the back when Waters wrote a book taking credit for his now famous “California” creations.

Tenaglia goes to great pains to remind us that Chez Panisse was a microcosm of the sexual revolution, with the entire staff taking turns sleeping with each other, thus creating an environment where cooking was literally like foreplay. Even Tower and Waters hooked up, despite the chef being gay. But it was in 1978 when Tower really got screwed – by Waters’ book. He’d had enough, and headed across the bay to start his own place in San Francisco called Stars. And to hear the rhapsodic praises by former patrons like Stewart, Batali and Bourdain, it was not just a restaurant; it was an all-night event – sort of like Manhattan’s Studio 54.

Their reminiscences make you wish you could still make reservations, but like its namesake, Stars eventually burned out in the aftermath of the 1989 earthquake. But Tower was not through. After a 16-year hiatus – and despite urgings from others like Bourdain not to do it – in 2015 he took on the monumental task of trying to make a tourist trap like New York’s Tavern on the Green into a four-star stop. And this is when the movie takes flight, because for the first time Tenaglia isn’t reliant on archival footage, re-enactments and talking heads. We’re there with Tower as he fights an uphill battle to whip his crew into shape – even after the brutal reviews start to roll in.

The result is a riveting insight into a stubborn artist who refuses to bend. Moreover, it drives home the point that Tower is often his own worst enemy. In many ways, Tower reminds me of Orson Welles, another “genius” who refused to play by the rules – and wound up being forced to the sidelines by his moneyed backers. Tenaglia makes these points powerfully, although it’s a little too on the nose to keep coming back to shots of him walking through the Mayan ruins near his Mexican home. Her film also suffers from the excessive re-enactments and busy filler shots, like meaningless close-ups of wine bottles, menus and champagne glasses.

Lucky for her, she has her ace in the hole in Tower, who poignantly sums up his melancholy when he says, “The hardest thing about life is having to face the terrible reality that every day is not to be like one’s dreams.” Like his favorite possession, an Augustus John painting of a lonely little boy, Tower stands proud and defiant, a survivor of egregious childhood neglect and multiple betrayals who found his cool in the warmth of a kitchen. JEREMIAH TOWER: THE LAST MAGNIFICIENT (R for language.) A documentary by Lydia Tenaglia featuring Jeremiah Tower, Anthony Bourdain, Martha Stewart and Mario Batali. Grade: B